Museums.

Day Of The Dead Exhibit Returns To Homespun Origins

October 27, 1995|By Jay Pridmore.

For people who like museums and speak little Spanish, nothing has brought Chicago's Mexican community to life like the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Pilsen, and particularly its annual Day of the Dead exhibit.

Day of the Dead is colorful and reveals a spiritual side of the Mexican character that is largely absent in Anglo life--that is, a contented, if not merry, relationship with death. In homes, churches and now at the museum, ofrendas, or altars, are assembled for this celebration, which coincides roughly with All Souls' Day (celebrated Nov. 2 in many Christian churches), to honor deceased loved ones.

It is mild criticism to point out that the best Day of the Dead exhibit at the Mexican museum may have been its first one, in 1987. That year, ofrendas were mostly of a traditional sort and intensely personal. One of them contained belongings of an old uncle of the artist's--a cane, fedora, his brand of cigarette and a handful of change he left on his bureau.

Since then, Day of the Dead has been used, not just here but in Mexican communities everywhere, as a motif for artists and even a stage for politics. Recent visitors to the museum, however, have longed for the innocence and vividness of the early exhibits, and the curators seem to have heard.

This year's Day of the Dead exhibit, which continues through Dec. 10, features ofrendas that are distinctly more traditional and more from the heart of everyday people.

The Day of the Dead touches many parts of the Mexican sensibility, and the museum in its relatively short history has faithfully dealt with many of them. In 1988, the art of Jose Guadalupe Posada was exhibited, and it featured the calavera, or skeleton, in popular Mexican art. Posada's skeletal images--often used in Day of the Dead altars--express sentiments such as the shortness of life and typical Mexican impatience with pretense.

Over the years, artists and art students have used the Day of the Dead to create distinctly modern images. They have used political themes such as the plight of migrant farm workers. Other ofrendas have been built by high school students honoring deceased friends killed on hard city streets.

This year, curator Cesario Moreno was determined to mount a more traditional exhibit. It meant fewer altars to social issues and more personal expressions such as those found in churches and homes.

Happily, Moreno found more people in Chicago neighborhoods observing the Day of the Dead, and there is evidence that the museum itself is partly responsible.

"In the past, people didn't want to put up ofrendas," said Susana Ortiz, who organized one for this year's exhibit with fellow parishioners from Our Lady of Tepeyac, a Pilsen church. "They felt that ofrendas were viewed as superstition, not as a tradition of life." But as the museum helped make ofrendas popular in the neighborhood, families felt freer to revive the custom.

Five years ago, parishioners at Our Lady of Tepeyac began bringing small photographs, hats and other objects that reminded them of deceased loved ones. They placed them at an ofrenda for the Day of the Dead (properly Nov. 3) and have repeated the tradition each year since then.

This year, when Moreno looked for groups to build ofrendas at the museum, Ortiz and her group were happy to oblige. It was easy for them to find a theme--grandmothers. "Many of us are grandmother-raised," said Ortiz, who came to Chicago from Mexico when she was 8 years old.

Pictures, food (plastic for this purpose), lacquered boxes and other remembrances are arranged along with marigolds (similar to the native Mexican flower of the season). Significantly, one of the parishioners added two rebozos, colorful shawls that women wear, which this woman purchased precisely because they reminded her of her grandmother.

The striking thing about the museum's Day of the Dead exhibit is its aesthetic range. The exhibit incorporates higher arts along with images that are entirely homespun.

There are even traces of humor--bits and pieces of Halloween--in many ofrendas, no matter how deeply the sentiments of the day are felt. "Mexicans have always had a wry way of looking at death," Ortiz said. "It is as if we are daring death to come and take us."

Which is only one trait that Anglo neighbors are sure to notice when they visit Pilsen, if only once a year, for the Day of the Dead.